Antarctica, the Falkland Islands & South Georgia Cruise 2019
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Field Guides Tour Report Antarctica, the Falkland Islands & South Georgia Cruise 2019 Feb 14, 2019 to Mar 8, 2019 Doug Gochfeld For our tour description, itinerary, past triplists, dates, fees, and more, please VISIT OUR TOUR PAGE. Perhaps nothing more exemplifies Antarctica than penguins on ice. While we saw a higher number of King Penguins, Gentoo Penguins were our most widely encountered species, breeding from the sandy beaches and rocky shores of the Falklands, all the way down to the ice covered Antarctic continent. Photo by guide Doug Gochfeld. Antarctica. The word evokes different images and emotions for everyone. Whatever those images are, they are but a shadow of what it is like to be physically present in Earth’s icy, vibrant, deep south. From sun-drenched colonies of hundreds of thousands of King Penguins, to seas whipped into a frenzy by southern storms, and channels choked closed with pack ice, we had a range of experiences that could be provided only by the extreme latitudes of our planet. We started out in Ushuaia, an extreme place in its own right, in Tierra del Fuego at the very southern tip of South America. Tierra del Fuego provided a starkly beautiful mountainous backdrop for a day and a half of exciting pre-maritime birding. Our trip to Tierra del Fuego National Park (TdF NP) started off with a bang when we found a family group of charismatic Magellanic Woodpeckers shortly after we entered the park! After watching and listening to these for a while, we availed ourselves of the rest of the copious birdlife the park had to offer, from flocks of Austral Parakeets and Patagonian Sierra-Finches, to Ashy-headed Goose and Austral Pygmy-Owl. The aptly named Thorn-tailed Rayadito was a group favorite, and other great pickups were Tufted Tit-Tyrant, Austral Blackbird, and a clean sweep on the three species of Cinclodes in the area. The next day was embarkation day, but not before we squeezed a bunch more birds out of Ushuaia. A trip to the dump gave us the range-restricted White-throated Caracara among many of its Southern and Chimango relatives, and the lagoons in town provided us with Austral Negrito, a waterfowl-palooza, and walk-away looks at Magellanic Snipe. After boarding the M/V Ortelius, our home for the next two and a half weeks, and being shown to our rooms, we went through various orientation and safety briefings, and ship fire drills, and then it was off into the Beagle Channel as dusk set in. Our first full day aboard the ship was also our first fully at-sea day as we steamed towards the Falkland Islands. Though we didn’t set foot on land, we still had plenty of birds to divert us. Black-browed Albatrosses and Southern Giant-Petrels were our constant companions, and amidst these graceful giants we picked out a single Southern Royal Albatross. White-chinned Petrels abounded as well, and we were fortunate to get close views of its very close relative, the regionally scarce Westland Petrel, flying around the boat and landing on the water. Our first prions of the voyage came into view as we got farther east, a Manx Shearwater put in a lightning quick appearance amongst the more numerous Great and Sooty shearwaters, and we had our first encounter with the dynamic and gorgeous Hourglass Dolphins in the afternoon. Our couple of days in the Falkland Islands (Las Islas Malvinas) was jam-packed with excellent natural history experiences. Carcass Island gave us all the regional scarcities we were hoping for: Obscenely close views of dozens of fearless Striated Caracaras, Blackish Cinclodes clambering over our feet and between our legs as they foraged seemingly heedless of the giants that were invading their territory, and the endemic Cobb’s Wren (it seems almost laughable that this was considered a subspecies of House Wren at some point!). Saunders Island presented our first big penguin spectacle, with Gentoo, Magellanic, and a couple of dozen King Penguins on the beach. The nearby cliffs held Black-browed Albatrosses (from plump downy youngsters to still courting adults!) , Imperial Cormorants, and around twenty young Southern Rockhopper Penguins molting their way through adolescence. The commanding view of the penguins from the bluff overlooking the beach with courting albatrosses in the side-view mirror was something right out of Field Guides Birding Tours • www.fieldguides.com • 800-728-4953 1 National Geographic, and the rolling seas during the beach extraction were a proper introduction to the world of zodiac landings (and these would fortuitously be our roughest landing conditions of the entire tour). While the landscape of the Falklands was beautiful, it was but a wafer thin appetizer of the scenery to come. We awoke on the 22nd adjacent to South Georgia Island, one of the most remote islands of its size on the planet. The rugged mountains coming right out of the sea with the lush valleys sheltered in between presented a starkly beautiful landscape as the backdrop for our next three days of adventure. We started out by landing in Grytviken, the first and most famous whaling station on the island. There were a couple of tours of the grounds on offer, as well as a post office from which to send postcards abroad (with some very fashionable albatross stamps). The must-do here, of course, is paying respects to “The Boss” himself, with a toast over Sir Ernest Shackleton’s (and Frank Wild’s) grave. There were indeed some birds around as well, highlighted by our first South Georgia Pipit for some of the group. An evening cruise down West Cumberland Bay to Neumayer Glacier under a kaleidoscopic sunset was a perfect way to end our first day here. Day two saw us exploring the Bay of Isles, the area where Robert Cushman Murphy did much of his pioneering seabird research in the early part of the last century. Our first landing here was Salisbury Plain, where we had our first exposure to a massive King Penguin rookery, and what an experience it was! The din of King Penguin generated noise was a constant, and when we were up close and personal with the penguins it was impossible to ignore or block out. It was breezy, and several snow squalls blew through, alternating with a golden morning sunlight every fifteen to twenty minutes. This gave us insight into the contrast in conditions these remarkable birds face throughout their lives. As we ate lunch, the boat re-positioned towards nearby Prion Island, where another special treat awaited us. First up for us was a zodiac cruise around the island, where we got to study several South Georgia Pipits feeding in the rocks and kelp, a South Georgia Pintail, and an unforgettable surprise encounter with a Leopard Seal tenderizing a young fur seal which it had caught. After this excitement, we landed on Prion Island, and climbed a short distance to an overlook that gave us stunningly good views of several Wandering Albatrosses on nests. There were also several of these longest-winged of all extant creatures gliding around and over the colony. We even got to see them switching nesting duties and vocalizing to each other and to the skuas lurking nearby. It was a truly magical afternoon. Day two alone would’ve been worth the price of admission, but our ultimate day on South Georgia went above and beyond, featuring not two, but three different once-in-a-lifetime excursions. We stepped outside as the first tendrils of dawn illuminated the landscape around Cooper Bay, and felt not a breath of wind, a great augury for what was to come. We embarked on a zodiac cruise around the bay, wending our way from the Chinstrap Penguin colony (our first) through the rocky shorelines with their attendant beds of kelp moving hypnotically to and fro, South Georgia Pipits in seemingly every cove, and ultimately to the base of a Macaroni Penguin colony. Both species of Giant-Petrels (including a couple of “White Nellys”) and a few Cape Petrels foraged on the water’s surface, heedless of our presence. We were at the base of the colony as the daily single-file procession of Macaroni Penguins shuffled its way downslope as if it were a never-ending conveyor belt, and they queued up and then dove into the water mere meters from where we were watching. We returned from this idyllic outing to have breakfast aboard as the ship re-positioned to our next destination: Gold Harbor. Gold is many people’s favorite place on South Georgia, and between the backdrop and the fauna, it’s hard to argue against that position! The main event here is ostensibly being immersed in the large colony of King Penguins and the larger than life Southern Elephant Seals, but the landscape wasn’t overshadowed by much. We enjoyed blue skies and sunshine beating down on us as we enjoyed it all, and even saw some Light-mantled Albatrosses patrolling over the nearby ridges. During lunch, we again repositioned, this time to St. Andrew’s Bay. The wind was picking up and the skies were clouding over, but we were able to have a successful landing before things started taking a turn for the rough. St. Andrew’s is host to the largest colony of King Penguins on South Georgia, and one of the largest in the world, numbering over a quarter of a million birds. Once we landed, those who chose to ford the penguin-lined, knee-deep, river were rewarded with a mind-boggling view overlooking the core of the astoundingly large colony, and the spectacle of penguins along the river and around the beaches were highlights for everyone.